Books that dramatically changed the way you think

[rousseau]

More recently, Berger's Social Construction of Reality comes to mind. Need to buy a copy of it.

 

[Politesse]

Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States. I am aware of its flaws, but when I encountered it in my early college years it was exactly the right dose to get me thinking outside the boundaries within which I had been taught to think of national history, and became the open door to discovering other authors - Wolf, Blaut - who helped develop my adult perspective on global history.

 

[Julep]

William McNeill, The Rise of the West[./I]
Abraham Maslow, Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences.
Blaise Pascal, Pensees.

 

[PyramidHead]

Democracy at Work by Richard D. Wolff
The Meaning of Marxism by Paul D'Amato
The Idea of Socialism: Towards a Renewal by Axel Honneth


My first foray into anti-capitalist thought, and having read them I've become the annoying person who sees the hallmarks of structural exploitation and oppression everywhere. The main thing that these books awakened in me was the feeling of "this is not okay" being transferred from the specific level of individual behaviors and events to the deeper level of systems and historical trends. Inasmuch as socialism is optimistic and utopian, I don't really buy into it as a likely future, but now I at least acknowledge that it would be better than the way things are currently done.

 

[James Brown]

Like the old saw: Socialism is where one group of people take advantage of another, and Capitalism is the other way around.

 

[marc]

Local Skeptics Society newsletter.

I was at a LARP event when a couple of the people there offered the first newsletter of their newly formed skeptics group. That led me to reading a lot of skeptics related stuff, good books like "How to Think About Weird Things", books by James Randi, and Michael Shermer. Which of course led me to reading about religious cults, which led to criticism of mainstream religion, and me becoming an atheist. Can't recall if the newsletter had anything that big or significant in it, but it certainly changed the path of my life.

 

[ronburgundy]

I'll add "Godel Escher Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid" by Hofstadter. An incredible piece of work.

If you haven't read it, your should read Hofstadter's "Anti-intellectualism in America". Written in 1963, it not only describes many manifestations of anti-intellectual culture in the US, but delves into how various historical factors converged to make the US more anti-intellectually religious than our European counterparts whose post-Enlightenment modernization was accompanied by a greater degree of secularization and decline of religiosity than the US.

 

[rousseau]

More recently, Berger's Social Construction of Reality comes to mind. Need to buy a copy of it.

Bought a copy of it and am now going through it carefully with a pencil, as opposed to the ratty, beaten-up decades old copy from the library I sped through many months ago.

It's just a fantastic read for anyone who wants to understand human society, and how it develops. Definitely fundamentally changed how I look at history, religion, epistemology, almost everything.

 

[Underseer]

Democracy at Work by Richard D. Wolff
The Meaning of Marxism by Paul D'Amato
The Idea of Socialism: Towards a Renewal by Axel Honneth


My first foray into anti-capitalist thought, and having read them I've become the annoying person who sees the hallmarks of structural exploitation and oppression everywhere. The main thing that these books awakened in me was the feeling of "this is not okay" being transferred from the specific level of individual behaviors and events to the deeper level of systems and historical trends. Inasmuch as socialism is optimistic and utopian, I don't really buy into it as a likely future, but now I at least acknowledge that it would be better than the way things are currently done.

We declared the Soviet system unworkable because they had to stand in long lines for rationed bread.

But America now has a growing problem of homeless people with full time jobs. I bet all those people living in their cars are starting to think that bread lines wouldn't be such a bad thing. If America manages to plummet into another race to the bottom like the one that sparked the Great Depression, it may be time to admit that capitalism is simply unworkable.

Sure, Europeans can make regulated capitalism work, but that kind of regulated capitalism is clearly impossible in America, so we have to choose between an income distribution like those of third world countries, or full-on Soviet-style socialism. Apparently we aren't capable of anything in between.

- - - Updated - - -

Like the old saw: Socialism is where one group of people take advantage of another, and Capitalism is the other way around.

Both sides are exactly as bad! Both sides! Both sides!

 

[PyramidHead]

Democracy at Work by Richard D. Wolff
The Meaning of Marxism by Paul D'Amato
The Idea of Socialism: Towards a Renewal by Axel Honneth


My first foray into anti-capitalist thought, and having read them I've become the annoying person who sees the hallmarks of structural exploitation and oppression everywhere. The main thing that these books awakened in me was the feeling of "this is not okay" being transferred from the specific level of individual behaviors and events to the deeper level of systems and historical trends. Inasmuch as socialism is optimistic and utopian, I don't really buy into it as a likely future, but now I at least acknowledge that it would be better than the way things are currently done.

We declared the Soviet system unworkable because they had to stand in long lines for rationed bread.

But America now has a growing problem of homeless people with full time jobs. I bet all those people living in their cars are starting to think that bread lines wouldn't be such a bad thing. If America manages to plummet into another race to the bottom like the one that sparked the Great Depression, it may be time to admit that capitalism is simply unworkable.

Sure, Europeans can make regulated capitalism work, but that kind of regulated capitalism is clearly impossible in America, so we have to choose between an income distribution like those of third world countries, or full-on Soviet-style socialism. Apparently we aren't capable of anything in between.

- - - Updated - - -

Like the old saw: Socialism is where one group of people take advantage of another, and Capitalism is the other way around.

Both sides are exactly as bad! Both sides! Both sides!

One thing I have started to appreciate is that the Soviet style of state-administered work isn't on the opposing end of the spectrum from capitalism with European social democracy in the middle. That's only true if you insist on making private versus state the sole relevant spectrum. Private enterprises and state apparatuses are really not all that different from each other in the ways they organize production (i.e. from the top down). They both differ dramatically from communal organization of production by democratic rule, not just at the level of electing some rich dude every couple of years, but directly guiding the decisions that affect our livelihood every single day. I used to buy into the old notion that people are too dumb to figure out such things for themselves, so we need representatives whose job it is to do what's best for us. That's a load of nonsense.

As an aside, there are bread lines where there isn't access to enough bread. Russia in the early 20th century, having rapidly morphed from an agrarian, peasant mode of living into an industrial power, all while suffering through civil and world wars, simply wasn't ready to enact true post-scarcity socialism. It would be much easier today, as we literally toss about 1/3 of the food we produce into the literal garbage for no reason, and have mastered the craft of creating ridiculous abundances of every commodity imaginable whether anybody wants or needs them or not.